You’ve probably seen it, too, but in case you can’t view the link,
it’s the one that starts by asking “What’s your problem? Bored?”
before imploring you to “Stop whining and watch a fight.” The sound
and image of a crying baby briefly pops up, because nothing sells a
product better than “You’re not a baby, are you?” The slogan of
this ad is “Fighting solves everything.” Car broke down? Fired from
your job? The remorse you’re feeling from pounding that Taco Bell
Party Pack in a single sitting? Don’t worry about any of that. Just
watch some fights and all will be well.

Aside from the cringe-worthy tropes of being a dude/man and the
laziness of its angle, there’s something ingenious about the ad, a
common motif immediately recognizable to all fight fans that the
advertisers likely didn’t realize at the time but is nonetheless
present. The hook of the commercial is that people have problems,
which is as sure an investment as you can make. As long as humans
are involved, it’s inevitable that something will go wrong.
Anything can happen.

“Anything can happen” is a familiar concept to fight fans. Not only
is it the reason why Fight Pass is proposed as a solution to
existential boredom, but it’s the dynamic of the sport that makes
it surprising and exciting; it was a promotional angle in the early
stages of MMA’s growth. A fight can end at any moment for any
number of reasons. The nature of fighting is like imagining Hail
Marys were worth three touchdowns in football or if there was a
full-court shot worth 25 points in basketball. Fights can change
instantaneously. Fighters can lose four and a half rounds and find
a submission in the waning minutes of the fight; they can jump off
the cage and kick people in the face. They can also miss weight the
day before they fight or spend long stretches locked in a staring
match in the cage.

UFC 209 on Saturday in Las Vegas had the potential to be a
standout card. Anchoring the event, Tyron
Woodley and Stephen
Thompson were to run back a memorable title fight from November
that ended in an unsatisfying way for all parties. Meanwhile,
Khabib
Nurmagomedov and Tony
Ferguson would finally get a chance to break the deadlock at
the top of the most talent-rich division in the sport. Given the
stakes and stylistic matchups of these two fights, it was a
near-certainty that UFC 209 was not going to disappoint. It was a
tell-your-friends kind of card. However anything can, and does,
happen.

There was some lost luster when the Nurmagomedov-Ferguson fight
fell apart. We’ll get to that shortly. Still, the welterweight
title tilt was compelling. In the first fight, Thompson had the
sounder process, and he won more rounds as a result. However,
Woodley did the most damage and had the more pronounced advantages
when he got his offense going. It was an exciting, incredibly
hard-to-call fight; a majority draw was the correct judgment. Both
fighters vowed to end the rematch in a more definitive fashion.

Instead, the same dynamic of the first fight played out, only this
time it was considerably less exciting and the decision was more
limp-wristed and unconvincing. It was a strategic battle in all the
not-fun ways: lots of head feints, pawing jabs and leg kicks and
long stretches of tactical jockeying for cage position. Neither man
really won or lost. In many ways, it was more deserving of a draw
than the first fight.

Of course, it’s hard to blame the fighters themselves for their
tepid performances, even if they’re the only ones who can be
blamed. Fans allow the sport to exist by supplying funding, but
they’re not the ones actually getting punched in the face. There’s
little dignity in crumpling under an overhand right from Woodley
and nothing virtuous in pursuing the muleta of Thompson’s distance
striking. Patience and timing are better fight tactics than
reckless abandon, but they’re also less fun to watch; and unlike
the intrigue of the chess match between T.J.
Dillashaw and Dominick
Cruz, this was more of a perpetual stalemate, interrupted only
a few times by meaningful moves. If any new viewers tuned in to see
the best welterweights square off, they likely won’t be tuning in
again anytime soon.

What happened during the welterweight title fight was unfortunate,
but what happened for the interim lightweight championship was
frustrating and bizarre.

After two tries to put two of the three best lightweight fighters
in the Octagon together, it felt like fate had finally found its
footing. Then, hours before weigh-ins, reports surfaced that
Nurmagomedov had to be hospitalized and the bout with Ferguson was
off. It only got weirder from there. Ferguson was offered Michael
Johnson as a last-second replacement opponent -- for
less money. You read that right. Ferguson was offered less
money for a lower-profile, arguably more dangerous fight with a
day’s notice. In what world does that make any kind of sense?
Imagine if your boss came to you and asked if you were willing to
leave your office gig for a day to clean the skyscraper windows
outside, only the safety harness is unreliable and you’d make more
money sitting in your cubicle.

Then, UFC President Dana White started throwing shade at
Nurmagomedov for “going rogue” and going to a hospital, noting that
he should have gone to the UFC first. Why? Because maybe the bout
could have been saved. Apparently White knows a guy who is willing
to ignore medical red flags like internal pain from dehydration,
just in case the show must go on. It’s sort of understandable, I
guess, since White and company know the medical community of Las
Vegas as well as anyone. Then again, if fighters feel like they
need to go to the hospital a day before fighting, maybe they should
go to the hospital. Sounds crazy, I know, but in a world where
denying your body its most basic need is a prerequisite for putting
that same body through rigorous physical strain the next day, a lot
of common sense goes out the window.

This is to say nothing about how White interrupted Alistair
Overeem’s post-fight press conference to extol the heavyweight
for puking his brains out in the days leading up to his fight with
Mark
Hunt. Perhaps Overeem’s courage in the face of food poisoning
inspired the UFC boss. It most definitely had nothing to do with
Nurmagomedov pulling out of his fight.

Fighting solves everything, aside from the problems it causes.
There are important conversations to be had about fighter safety,
weight cutting and the UFC’s desire to inject itself in those
conversations under the guise of being an objective participant. If
nothing else, UFC 209 succeeded in shedding some light on those
issues. Plus, a lot of the other fights were actually good.

Nevertheless, MMA is a seductive, whimsical mistress, and though
the coquetry of violent entertainment is hard to turn down, there’s
always potential for pay-per-views to turn into $60 naps. The
gambit is worth it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t complain a
little when the letdowns come. If you can’t handle MMA at its
majority decision, then you sure as hell don’t deserve it at its
come-from-behind, walk-off knockout.

Hailing from Kailua, Hawai’i, Eric Stinton has been contributing
to Sherdog since 2014. He received his BFA in Creative Writing from
Chapman University and graduate degree in Special Education from
University of Hawai’i. He is an occasional columnist for Honolulu
Civil Beat, and his work has also appeared in The Classical. You
can find his writing at ericstinton.com. He currently lives in Seoul with his
fiancé and dachshund.